Keynote Speakers
[EASP/JSSP present] Tribulations and triumphs of international research
Peter Saunders
Emeritus Professor, University of New South Wales
Professor Peter SAUNDERS was the Director of the Social Policy Research Centre (SPRC) at the
University of New South Wales, Sydney between 1987 and 2009 and held a Research Chair in
Social Policy within the Centre until October 2019 when he was appointed to his current
position of Emeritus Professor. His research interests and publications cover: poverty,
deprivation and social exclusion; economic and social inequalities; household needs and budget
standards; social security design, impact and reform; ageing and social protection; and
comparative social policy. He was elected a Fellow of the Academy of the Social Sciences in
Australia in 1995, was the first President of the Australian Social Policy Association between
2009 and 2013 and President of the Foundation for International Studies on Social Security
(FISS) between 2009 and 2023. He has worked at the OECD, as a consultant for the IMF, the
Asian Development Bank and the Economic and Social Commission for Asia and the Pacific
(ESCAP) and in 2015-16 was a member of the Advisory Board of the World Bank Commission on
Global Poverty. His recent books include Poverty and Inequality in East Asia: Work, Family and
Policy, Edward Elgar, 2022 (with Inhoe Ku), Revisiting Henderson: Poverty, Social Security and
Basic Income, Melbourne University Press, 2019, and Social Protection in East Asian Chinese
Societies. Challenges, Responses and Impacts, Routledge, 2018 (with Alex Jingwei He).
Emiko Ochiai
Professor of Sociology at Kyoto Sangyo University and Emeritus Professor at
Kyoto University.
OCHIAI Emiko is Professor of Sociology at Kyoto Sangyo University and Emeritus Professor at
Kyoto University. She was invited to EHESS in Paris as Blaise Pascal Chair and to Stockholm
University and Nanjing University as visiting professor. Her areas of interest are gender, family,
and intimate relations in a larger social context and from historical and comparative
perspectives. In short, she is interested in the simultaneous transformation in private lives and
public institutions. Her major projects focus on care in the midst of welfare state reconfiguration
and new migration trends particularly in East and Southeast Asia. Her publications in this area
of research include Asia’s New Mothers (co-editorship, Global Oriental, 2008), Asian Women
and Intimate Work (co-editorship, Brill, 2013), and Transformation of the Intimate and the
Public in Asian Modernity (co-editorship, Brill, 2014). She has also devoted herself to the
creation of common foundations for international research collaboration within and on Asia,
resulting in the publication of Asian Families and Intimacies (4 vols., co-editorship, Sage, 2021), a
collection of most influential works from 9 Asian societies, and the CAFS (Comparative Asian
Family Survey) database. She is the Editor-in-Chief for The Intimate and the Public in Asian and
Global Perspectives series from Brill.
[FISS presents] Advances in Social Policy research in Europe
Agnieszka Chłoń-Domińczak
Professor, SGH Warsaw School of Economics
Vice-Rector for Science and Director of the Institute of Statistics and Demography at SGH Warsaw School of Economics. Member of the Committee on Demographic Studies of the Polish Academy of Sciences, and Deputy Managing Director as well as Country Team Leader for Poland in the Survey of Health, Ageing and Retirement in Europe (SHARE). Formerly, among others, deputy minister of labour and social policy in Poland. In 2021-2023 member of the High-Level Group on the future of social protection and of the welfare state in the EU, advising the European Commission. Her areas of specialisation include demography, pension systems, the labour market, social policy, health and education.
Bea Cantillon
Professor, University of Antwerp
Bea Cantillon is Professor of Social Policy and member of the Herman Deleeck Centre for Social Policy at the University of Antwerp. She has acted as a consultant to, among others, the OECD, the European Commission, and the Belgian government. Currently, she is co-chair of the federal High Committee for a Just Transition and member of the Belgian High Council for Employment. Bea Cantillon is fellow of the Royal Belgian Academy of Sciences and corresponding fellow of the British Academy. She was awarded a Doctorate honoris causa by UCLouvain Saint-Louis Brussels and the Van Doorn Chair at the Erasmus School of Social and Behavioural Sciences in Rotterdam. Recent book publications include Reconciling Work and Poverty Reduction (with F. Vandenbroucke ) and Decent Incomes for all ( with Tim Goedemé and John Hills ) both with Oxford University Press. She co-authored the book Social Indicators, The EU and Social Inclusion with Tony Atkinson, Erik Marlier and Brian Nolan also with Oxford University Press. Recently she published several papers on EU social funding and social citizenship.
Kenneth Nelson
Professor, University of Oxford
Kenneth Nelson holds the Barnett Professorship in Social Policy at the Department of Social Policy and Intervention (DSPI) at the University of Oxford. Nelson was previously Professor of Sociology at Stockholm University. Prof Nelson conducts research on the drivers and consequences of welfare states and social policy, often using comparative research methods. He has written extensively of various topics related to social policy, including the role of partisan politics, poverty, social inequality, health, intergenerational justice, and employment. Nelson is the director of the renowned Social Policy Indicators Database (SPIN). He is also co-chair of the European Social Policy Analysis network (ESPAnet), which is the largest international research community on social policy in Europe, if not the world. He is board member of the Foundation for International Studies of Social Security (FISS), and active in several research projects at European level.
Rense Nieuwenhuis
Associate Professor, Stockholm University
Rense Nieuwenhuis, associate professor in sociology at the Swedish Institute for Social Research (SOFI) at Stockholm University, studies how family diversity and social policy affect poverty and economic inequality. Typically, his research is country-comparative and has a gender perspective. His recent focus was on single-parent families, how women’s earnings affect inequality between households, and family policy outcomes. Nieuwenhuis is the joint coordinator of the Horizon-Europe financed rEUsilience project. He published in journals such as Social Forces, European Sociological Review, European Societies, Journal of Marriage and Family, and Journal of European Social Policy. He co-edited the books ‘The triple bind of single-parent families’, the ‘Palgrave Handbook of Family Policy’, and ‘Social Policy in Changing European Societies’. Occasionally, he acts as independent expert for organisations such as UN Women, the European Commission, the European Parliament, and the European Institute for Gender Equality (EIGE).
[Japan special session] How Japan is coping with the most aged society
Shogo Takegawa
Emeritus Professor, The University of Tokyo
1982-87: The Social Development Research Institute,1987-93: Department of Sociology, Chuo University, 1993-2019: Department of Sociology, The University of Tokyo, 2019-2024: Faculty of Sociology and Social Work, Meijigakuin University. His research focuses on comparative social policy. He authored ‘Japan’s Welfare-State Regime: Welfare Politics, Provider and Regulator’, Development and Society, Vol.34 No.2 (December 2005:169–190) and ‘International Circumstances as Factors in Building a Welfare State: Welfare Regimes in Europe, Japan and Korea’, International Journal of Japanese Sociology, No.18 (November 2009:79–96), “Liberal preference and conservative policies: the puzzling size of Japan’s welfare state”, Social Science Japan Journal, Vol. 13 No. 1(Summer 2010): 53-67, “Workfare in Japan” in Chak Kwan Chan and Kinglun Ngok ed., Welfare Reform in East Asia: Towards workfare? Routledge, 2011, 100-114, “Between Western Europe and East Asia: development of social policy in Japan” in Misa Izuhara, ed., Handbook on East Asian Social Policy, Edward Elgar, 2012, 41-64.
Yasushi Sukenari
Associate Professor at the Graduate School of Humanities and Sociology, University of Tokyo.
Yasushi Sukenari is a sociologist and an associate professor at the Graduate School of
Humanities and Sociology, University of Tokyo. His research areas include housing,
community and social policy. Starting with The Historical Sociology of Modern Dwelling
Space (2008, in Japanese), he has investigated the origins of the housing regime of
Japan. He has been conducting comparative research on housing regimes in recent
years. Also, by translating basic literature on the sociology of housing and
comprehending research histories, he has explored theories and methods for analysing
housing sociologically. In addition to historical and theoretical approaches, he has put
effort into a critical review of housing policy based on field research.
Satoko Hotta